There presently exist various forms of hand held staplers which are used for various purposes. One such use is for closing a wound or incision in the skin or facia of a patient. Such surgical staplers generally utilize a supply of staples such as in magazine or cartridge form whereby the staples are fed to the forward end of the stapler, a handle frequently being utilized to actuate a driver which bends the staple about an anvil and into the patient. A disadvantage with such arrangement is that when the bending operation is complete, it is necessary to move the stapler so as to withdraw the fixed anvil from beneath the crown of the staple; failure to perform this maneuver may result in tearing the formed staple out of the tissue of the wound site. The stapler is then moved to the desired location for applying the next staple. U.S. Pat. No. 4,179,057 is typical of such stapler.